Craft, Create & Celebrate

I am excited to be offering 30 days of fun crafts to keep kids active and entertained this summer! You won’t want to miss a day of these fun crafts for kids from some amazing bloggers! Please be sure to pay them a visit!

Hey, you Craft Campers! I’m Larissa Holland at mmmcrafts, and I love to make stuff. You can find all kinds of coffee-fueled patterns and tutorials here on my blog, and also creative stuff for sale in my etsy shop.

I’m so happy that Cindy invited me to be a part of Craft Camp again this year. I’m doing another paper craft this time, a cool 3D Lizard Gift Tag, tailor-made for older, scissor savvy kids. It combines the card and gift tag all in one! If you have some birthday parties to attend this summer, this is a sure fire way to make your gift a stand-out on the gift table, plus have some crafty fun to boot. As a bonus, the lizard makes a fun paper toy for after the party.

Here’s what you’ll need to make one:

This PDF template printed at full size on an 8.5 x 11 inch piece of colored card stock(template is shown already cut out in the photo above)

Scraps of white and various colors of card stock for the details

Scissors or craft knife

Gel glue and a toothpick

Circle punches of various sizes. I used a standard hole punch, a one inch starburst, a 5/8 inch circle and a 1/2 inch circle.

Gel pen or marker for greeting

Plus the following items that are optional but certainly add pizazz:

Pinking scissors

Pop dots

1) Cut out the lizard with scissors or a craft knife (if you use a craft knife, BE CAREFUL, and be sure to cut it on a protective mat. You might want to get Mom or Dad involved in this step). Once your lizard has been liberated from the page, turn your craft knife blade* to the wrong side (not the sharp side) and score along the line that runs down the middle of the lizard, all the way from the nose to the tip of the tail. Then score across the neck, and across where each leg meets the body. Did I say BE CAREFUL? I did? I’m glad you are being careful, because that blade is sharp.

*No craft knife for scoring? Use the tip of a straight pin instead.

Score with the dull side, not the sharp. You don’t want to do lizard surgery.

2) You are ready to embellish your lizard! Grab a scrap piece of paper from the recycle pile and squeeze a blob of gel glue on it. You will use a toothpick that is dipped in the glue to apply the glue to the small pieces for the next steps. You don’t need to cover the entire piece with glue for it to stick just fine. Less is better, because you don’t want glue squishing out from under your pieces. Ew.

Hmm. You can’t see the blob of glue on the scrap very well. But trust me, it’s there.

3) Make the eyes. Punch out two larger circles and two smaller circles. I used the 5/8 inch punch for the larger, and the 1/2 inch punch for the smaller. Glue them together like so:

Punch two one-inch circles. I used a starburst, but a plain circle works too. Use a pop dot or a dab of glue to add the smaller eyes to the larger circles like so:

4) Now add the eyes to the lizard’s head with either pop dots or dabs of glue.

5) Punch out different sized circles in various colors and glue them on (using the toothpick method) to decorate your lizard. Be sure to leave some room on the tail to write your greeting:

6) If you have some pinking scissors, cut out a shape like this for teeth and glue it underneath the lizard’s head so that the pointy parts just peek out, then repeat for the other side:

7) Cut out a small rectangle and snip out a triangle from the end to form a lizard tongue and glue it under the head, like this:

8) Summon up your A-Game penmanship and write a birthday greeting along the tail. Be sure to tell them who it is from! There’s room on the other side of the lizard if you’d like to write a note.

9) Now comes the fun, bendy part. Gently crease your lizard all along the curved score line. Start from one end and work your way to the other. If it is too hard to bend or it keeps bending in the wrong places, you may need to lay it flat and score it again. Bend the neck and legs along their scores. That’s it! You are done.

10) Now all you have to do is hook the lizard’s top leg over the edge of the gift bag. You can secure the leg inside the bag with a piece of tape if you are worried about it getting knocked off:

Show off your work. I’d love to see your lizard tags in my flickr group!

What, you don’t need a lizard gift tag? You can still make a 3D pet lizard and place him/her in a terrarium. Have fun making an environment for your lizard to enjoy by adding moss and rocks. Print the template at different sizes to assemble a whole family of lizards!

Mom and Dad: You can young this craft down for little kids by doing the following:

Cut out and score the lizard for them, or skip the scoring and keep it flat.

Let them use markers or crayons to color on eyes and dots/stripes instead of using punched paper.

Skip the tongue and teeth.

I hope you enjoy the tutorial! If you are ready for a more challenging paper project, check out my 3D project from last year. Cindy, thanks for another great summer crafting series!

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Comments

Oh, my. This is a super gift embellishment or a great decoration all by itself! And it works for girls AND boys by changing the paper color used. Your descriptions and pictures are just perfect. Thank you so much for sharing your talent with everyone!

Kids never read the cards and they can be so expensive. I love the idea of my kids making another kid’s birthday card. This is so cute and such a great idea….and I have a birthday party on Saturday. We will FOR SURE be making him a lizard birthday card! Thank you!

I love this idea and have added to my list of things to create with my kids this summer! I am really enjoying this whole Craft Camp series. Thanks for doing it! I plan to share a picture and a link to this post in my Sunday 7/10 Links to Love post over at http://www.momof6.com!
Warmly,
Sharon